The word cell, comes from the latin word, 'cellula' meaning a small room or a monk's tiny bare room. This descriptive name, was chosen by an English scientist Robert Hooke in the book he published in 1665, after he examined microscopically, cork tissue (a plant material) and saw that they contain neatly arranged little chambers. He compared this chambers to the room monk's lived in and he called them cells.
In 1835, a french microscopic zoologist Felix Dujardin, examined a thin slice of animal tissue under much improved microscope and discovered that the cells have content (jelly like material). He named the cntent sarcode. In the same year, Czech experimental physiologist, Johannes Evangelista Purkinje observed the presence of small granules while looking at the plant tissue through a microscope. Later in 1839, Purkinje named the content, protoplasm, Hugo Von Mohl a German botanist also in 1846 named it protoplasm.
In 1838, Mathias Jakob Schleiden, a german botanist carried out an extensive study on the structure of plants and concluded that plants were composed of cells.
The cell is the structural and functional unit of all known living organisms. It is the smallest unit of an organism, that is classified as living and is often called the building block of life. Some organisms are unicellular eg bacteria, amoeba, paramecium, chlamydomonas. Others are multicellular eg hydra, earthworms, birds, elephant, man etc. (Humans are estimated to have 100 trillion cells) cells consist of protein rich material that is differentiated into cytoplasm and a nucleus forming the protoplasm, which consists of organised complex materials.
This excerpts is from my book, A glance at cell biology. This book can be bought from the online store, www.morebooks.de (https://www.morebooks.de/gb/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=Ukponmwan+ifueko+oghogho+)
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